From floor routines to the balance beam, many gymnastic events require a considerable amount of leg strength. To emulate the powerful legs of gymnasts, you'll need to engage in a training program that promotes leg strength in the major muscle groups of your legs while also promoting muscular endurance, which will keep you performing at your best even at long meets with multiple events. Always exercise with proper supervision to reduce the likelihood of injury.
Explosive exercises, also known as plyometric exercises, can help you produce a large quantity of force in a brief period of time. This is important for jumping high and far, which is beneficial for a number of gymnastics events. Plyometric exercises that can help you develop explosive leg strength include tuck jumps, split squat jumps, depth jumps and box jumps. Tuck jumps involve jumping as high as you can and tucking your knees up to your chest in the air, while box jumps involve jumping forward onto a box or other raised platform. For split squat jumps, stand with one foot behind your torso and one in front with both knees slightly bent. Squat down before exploding upward, moving your rear foot to the front of your body and the front foot to your rear while in the air. For depth jumps, step off of a box, landing on both feet and then immediately jump as high as you can. Because these are unweighted exercises, a high-repetition range, such as 10 to 15, will be effective.
The muscles of your calves -- the soleus and gastrocnemius -- are not as large as the other muscles in your legs, but they do perform vital functions. These muscles help to flex and extend your feet, actions that can make or break your performance on the balance beam, during floor routines and in any other event involving running or jumping. Some of the most effective exercises for your calves include seated calf raises, single-leg calf presses and standing dumbbell calf raises. Aim for high repetitions -- 15 to 20 -- to build muscular endurance so that your calves can provide power even during long routines.
The quadriceps is a large muscle group on your upper leg, made up of the rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius and vastus medialis. These muscles flex your leg at the hip and extend it at the knee, making them integral in every step you take. You can strengthen your quadriceps with dumbbell step-ups, squats, lunges and deadlifts. When performing squats and deadlifts, maintain a straight back throughout the exercise to prevent injury. Performing low levels of repetitions, such as six to eight, will help you build strength for explosive power.
On the backside of your quadriceps is the hamstrings, another group of muscles. These muscles are the biceps femoris, semimembranosus and semitendinosus. This muscle group is also crucial for gymnastics, as it drives hip extension, knee flexion and knee rotation. Hamstring curls, leg presses, deadlifts and squats can help you develop your hamstring strength for gymnastics. As with calf exercises, performing a high number of repetitions can be helpful to provide maximum muscular endurance with minimal muscle bulk to get in your way. Page 2
Stretching your muscles before and after you exercise might not be as exciting as the exercise itself, but it's a vitally important part of your workout regimen. When you plan to exercise your calves, either through a gym workout or by playing a sport, proper stretching can help you avoid a muscle strain. While stretches have several benefits, they do not increase the size of your calves.
One of the chief benefits of stretching is that doing so increases the flexibility of the muscle to prevent injury. The process of stretching lengthens the muscle's fibers; the more the fibers stretch, the longer the muscle will be, which is important because muscles naturally want to shorten. Other benefits of regular stretching include improving your performance during exercise and increasing blood flow to the areas you stretch.
It's ideal to devote a few minutes to stretching your calves before and after each workout, but you should always use dynamic stretches before exercising and static stretches at the conclusion of your workout. Dynamic stretches are more active stretches that not only put your muscles through their full range of motion, but also increase your heart rate and core temperature, which helps you transition into the workout. During your cool-down period, use static stretches to improve your flexibility and relax your muscles.
Although stretching is important to keep your muscles healthy, regular stretching won't build your calves. Building your calves requires specific exercises that provide resistance and contract the muscles. You can use many types of exercises to build your calf muscles, including body-weight exercises, weight machine exercises and resistance bands. A simple calf exercise that you can perform with or without weights is the calf raise. Stand on the edge of a platform on one foot with your heel hanging off the edge, and then lift your heel as high as you can before lowering it back to the starting position to complete one rep. Complete 20 reps and then switch legs.
A simple dynamic stretch for your calves is a set of calf step-backs. To begin, stand with your feet together at roughly shoulder-width apart and your knees slightly bent. Quickly take a step backward with one leg and bounce slightly to warm up your calves. Switch the position of your feet and continue this step-and-bounce pattern for 20 reps. To perform a static calf stretch, stand a couple feet away from a wall with one leg behind the other, your arms straight and your palms pressed against the wall. Bend your front leg but keep the back leg straight and keep your heel down. When you feel a stretch in your back calf, hold the pose for 30 seconds before switching legs.
What you may not have realized—until you saw the photo above showing the 1984 team alongside the 2016 team—is that male gymnasts weren’t always so “big.” Don’t get us wrong: the guys in 1984 were absolutely strong and obviously fit (see photo below) but muscle size wasn’t as neccessary for the sport back then as it is today. “The sport has changed, and it really takes somebody physically strong to do some of the things that you’ve gotta do,” says Tim Daggett, a member of the U.S.’s 1984 gold-medal winning men’s Olympic team and a gymnastics analyst for NBC. “When I was competing, you had to do one strength part on rings. Nowadays, the majority of the elements that give you the higher potential score are strength elements, so you’re seeing guys who are doing four, five, or sometimes even six strength parts,” explains Daggett. The changing of the rules—which happens every four years—really dictated the need to get stronger, he says. “There were a lot more swinging elements, rather than strength,” adds Jake Dalton, a member of the 2016 Olympics men’s gymnastics team. “On top of that, we have a lot of other upper body events like parallel bars where you need some strength for doing what we call upper arm skills—where you’re swinging from your arms, doing a flip and then catching again,” he says. [Tim Dagget in 1984. Photo courtesy of USA Gymnastics] The supplemental workouts of modern day gymnasts may not look too different from the ones you’re doing yourself in the gym.But they certainly are way different from anything that Daggett and his teammates were doing back in 1984. “We didn’t lift weights at all back then,” he says. Today, male gymnasts are pumping iron (Dalton weight trains about twice a week) in the gym we’re more familiar with—one that doesn’t have parallel bars and balance beams but instead is filled with barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells. They’re also seeking strength coaches: Male gymnasts are consulting with strength coaches at a higher level now than they were even 30 years ago, a spokesperson from USA Gymnastics told Men’s Fitness. Gymnastics coaches are looking outside of the sport—to a strength trainer who could suggest exercises that aren’t necessarily gymnastics bodyweight ones. [Jake Dalton. Photo courtesy of USA Gymnastics] “In gymnastics, you are using so many different muscle groups at once to help yourself through, and I think that’s where the weight training has helped me to isolate specific muscles that were weak before,” says Dalton—just as a basketball player might do lunges or squat exercises to strengthen his vertical leap, or a soccer player might do single-leg hops to increase his shooting power. “I don’t necessarily max out, but try and exhaust certain body parts,” says Dalton. The bench press a crucial exercise for a gymnast focused on rings, although Dalton cut it out now that he’s getting so close to competition and more intensely training for a gymnastics routine. “The free-weight bench press helped me with some strength exercises on rings because it helped me strengthen my pecs,” Dalton says, noting that nailing it takes a strong chest to really nail these maneuvers. But he’s sure to work on that symmetry, just as a bodybuilder—or any guy looking to perfect his physique—might do. “On chest days, I’ll make sure I throw one or two back exercises in there so I’m not overloading myself on chest,” Dalton says. Here’s what a circuit workout might look like for Dalton in the lead up to the Olympics: -Bicep Curls with EZ-curl Bar -Triceps pushdowns -Pull-ups -Chin-ups -Seated Arnold press What’s missing? “I actually don’t do any squats or legs exercises. I have pretty big legs for a gymnast anyway, so I’m not trying to gain size for those,” he says. It’s not just Dalton who hits the weights on the regular.[Donnell Whittenburg, photo courtesy of USA Gymnastics] “He’s massive—one of those guys who just naturally is a beast,” says Dalton, of Donnell Whittenburg, an alternate for the Olympic team. [Alex Naddour, photo courtesy of USA Gymnastics] “Alex Naddour, my teammate on the Olympics team, has figured out what works best for him. He’s one of our best pommel horse guys but he’s extremely strong on rings as well. He’s one of the biggest, bulkiest guys, but he’s still super flexible and strong,” says Dalton. [Brandon Wynn. Photo courtesy of USA Gymnastics] “One of our strongest and biggest ring guys is Brandon Wynn—He’s able to put the strength elements on rings because he’s had years and years of weight training in high school,” says Dalton. Wynn didn’t make the Olympics team this year, but Dalton says he’s just taken strength to another level. “He’s so strong that he can maybe push through a few extra skills or things that other guys couldn’t,” says Dalton. You know you have to get in certain macros if you want to put on muscle. So do the guys on the 2016 Olympics team. “We’re paying more attention to what we’re eating—along with our training—that helps us increase muscle size as well,” confirms Dalton. But the guys in 1984? Not so much: “The only thing we ever worried about was what we were going to eat the night before the meet. A lot of people wanted to eat a huge carb dinner just because that’s what we thought was supposed to help us. And where did we learn that? Just anecdotal evidence, people talking, it really was incredibly unsophisticated,” says Daggett. That’s not to say it was “bad” at all—that was just where the latest in science and high performance research was then. The 2016 guys are lucky in a sense, but just wait until 2048. We can only imagine what insane science will be available then to guide athletes in training and nutrition. It’s almost certain that what we’re doing now will seem quite unsophisticated as well. “The Olympians today have experts that are guiding them, whether it’s resources like Men’s Fitness or at the Olympic training center, having a nutritionist on staff at the individual colleges—they’re just so much further educated on that,” says Daggett. Dalton, for one, takes full advantage of the resources available to him, planning out every last gram of protein, carbs, and fat in his day. Here’s his daily macro and calorie breakdown: 1800-2100 calories 200 grams of carbs 170-180 grams of protein 65-70 grams of fat “Sometimes, if I am dying of hunger, I will up the intake of carbs and protein, but I try to stay around there because what I’ve noticed is that keeps me around the weight that I want where I’m feeling pretty strong,” says Dalton who likes to maintain his weight at 145 to 146 pounds. “I’ve noticed that those macros for me have been a great combination of getting enough food in my body not to be starving all day.” Here’s what he looks to for those macros: 7:30AM: Fasted workout. “I go in fasted because, especially when we have a heavier strength circuit, I feel like I’m going to get sick if I eat before, so I go in fasted,” says Dalton. [Read more about the benefits of fasted workouts here.] 8:30AM (post-workout breakfast):-Egg white omelet with mushrooms.-One slice toast-Strawberries-Turkey bacon -Coffee Snack:-Quest bar “The macros on those are pretty good, with a little bit of fat, some good carbs and protein, and not too much sugar,” says Dalton. Lunch:-Egg white omelet with mushrooms (yes, again) -1 cup oatmeal PM Workout Post-workout meal / First dinner:-6-8 oz chicken-Sweet potato -Salad or Brussels sprouts Snack: Second dinner: It is still—appropriately—a delicate balance between getting enough muscle to help you in the areas where it can help you—but not so much to where it inhibits your flexibility. “Our entire sport is about being as strong and as flexible and as light as possible. You still want to be light and flexible, but you also want to be strong,” says Dalton. (There are some events such as pommel horse where, if you are too bulky, you don’t have enough flexibility to swing with your arms behind you.) Still, as these guys clearly demonstrate, muscle mass isn’t just for the guys competing in the obvious muscle sports this year. These male gymnasts have added something we at Men’s Fitness know and love—weight training—to their already near-perfect formula for gold-medal success. We can’t wait to see how these guys perform in Rio. 2016 Rio Games: Making America’s Olympic Gladiators >>> For access to exclusive gear videos, celebrity interviews, and more, subscribe on YouTube! |
Why do gymnasts have big thighs
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